The present invention relates to a substance mixing apparatus and a substance mixing method, more specifically, to an apparatus and method for mixing substances by causing droplets discharged from orifices of two or more flow paths to collide with one another.
In recent years, in fields of biotechnology and chemistry, an increase in scale and speed of a reaction analysis process is progressing. For realizing a high throughput of the reaction analysis process, it is effective to simultaneously analyze a large number of micro reaction systems. With a large amount of reaction systems, when carrying out an analysis on a substance having an extremely high reaction speed, for example, a reaction progresses in a part of the reaction systems before mixing of all the reaction systems is ended. As a result, a large number of reaction systems cannot be analyzed under the same condition, and an accurate analysis result cannot be obtained.
On the other hand, with micro reaction systems, there is a problem that it becomes difficult to uniformly mix substances in a certain amount. When the amounts of substances vary among the reaction systems or substances are mixed without uniformity, reproducibility of the analysis is lowered, and a reliable analysis result cannot be obtained.
As a technique that enables trace substances to be mixed uniformly in a certain amount, Patent Document 1 discloses a uniformly mixing method and a uniformly mixing device for a substance that are characterized by including two or more piezoelectric type fluid droplet discharge means, and in that small fluid droplets discharged from the fluid droplet discharge means are caused to collide with one another to be uniformly mixed. According to this technique, a mixing-reaction operation of a minute amount of substances becomes possible, and the substances can be caused to react uniformly so that a uniform reactant can be obtained. It should be noted that the “piezoelectric type fluid droplet discharge means” adopted in the uniformly mixing method for a substance and the like is a fluid droplet discharge apparatus that generates a pressure in a fluid compression chamber by deforming a partial wall portion of the fluid compression chamber by a piezoelectric/electrostrictive device to thus inject a fluid in the fluid compression chamber from a nozzle hole.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Hei 11-262644